


The Places Fandom Dwells: A Cautionary Tale

by mizstorge



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Essays, Fandom history, Fans and Fandom, Gen, Meta, Nonfiction, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Social Media, meta - fandom - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 14:48:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17706299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizstorge/pseuds/mizstorge
Summary: This is an attempted explanation of the sequential episodes of censorship at LiveJournal in 2007 known as Strikethrough and Boldthrough, originally posted at Tumblr (X) 30 May 2014, the 7th anniversary of Strikethrough.





	The Places Fandom Dwells: A Cautionary Tale

  


Just about seven years ago, on 29 May 2007, hundreds of fans with accounts at LiveJournal woke up to the shocking discovery that their blogs, and those of some of their friends and favorite fandom communities, had been deleted without prior notice. 

It’s estimated that LiveJournal suspended around 500 blog accounts. The only notice of this was was the strike through the names of the suspended blogs, which led to this event being called Strikethrough. 

At the time, LiveJournal was the primary blogging platform for fandom. Its friends list and threaded conversations enabled fans to easily find each other and have discussions. Its privacy settings allowed fans to share as much, or as little, as they chose with others. It was a place to publish and archive fan fic, art, and meta. These features give some idea why the deletions of so many fandom blogs were so devastating. 

Speculation and uncertainty were rampant during the two days it took for LiveJournal to finally respond to demands from users for information. At first, LJ stated only that it had been advised that journals listing an illegal activity as an interest could be regarded as soliciting for that illegal activity, which put the site at legal risk. It was eventually revealed that Livejournal and its owners at the time, Six Apart, had been contacted by a group calling themselves [Warriors for Innocence](http://innocence-jihad.livejournal.com/31786.html), a conservative Christian organization with ties to the militia movement who accused LJ of being a haven for pedophiles and child pornography. 

LJ had based the account suspensions on the tags used in LJ blogs. LJ users list their interests in their profiles, and those interests functions as tags. LJ took the blanket view that there was no difference between blogs that listed “rape”.”incest”, or “pedophilia” among their interests, and blogs with posts tagged “rape”. “incest”, or “pedophilia”. As a consequence, some of the accounts that had been suspended were support sites for rape and incest survivors, and gay teens, as well as the fandom sites that posted book discussions, RP, fan fiction, and fan art. 

Livejournal grudgingly issued a partial apology to users on 31 May, but it took _months_ for the organization to sort through the suspended blogs. According to LiveJournal, "most" of the suspended accounts were restored. Not _all_ of the suspended accounts were restored, though, and some of those that weren’t restored belonged to the support groups and fandoms. 

One result of Strikethrough was that many communities and individual fans locked their blogs so the content could be viewed only community members, or those on their friends lists. Other fans began to open accounts at blogging platforms like JournalFen, The Greatest Journal, or Insane Journal. There was definitely an atmosphere of mistrust and paranoia at LJ that hadn’t previously existed, and part of the problem was that LiveJournal had not come through with promised clarification about what sort of content violated the ToS. 

So, of course, it happened all over again. 

On 3 August, LiveJournal once again suspended a number of accounts without warning. This time, the account names were bolded, and the event became known as Boldthrough. 

Anxious and angry LJ users waited ten days until LJ issued an explanation. The deletions had been the result of decisions made by LiveJournal's Abuse Prevention Team, made up of LiveJournal employees and Six Apart staff. This group was charged with reviewing blogs that had been reported for violations of the ToS. They were authorized to determine whether blog content was in violation of the ToS, now defined as any content not containing enough serious artistic value to offset the sexual nature of the material. The team had been empowered to terminate offending accounts without warning.

Eventually, the ToS was changed to state that accounts deemed in violation would in future be deleted only if the offender refused to remove offending content. This meant that users had the choice of removing the content LJ deemed offensive, or leaving LJ. 

As a result of Boldthrough, more fans headed to other blogging platforms.

Just a few days before Strikethrough, LJ user [astolat](http://astolat.livejournal.com/150556.html) proposed a new fan fic archive, one that would be be created by fans, for fans. This was the birth of the [Organization for Transformative Works](http://transformativeworks.org/), a non-profit organization dedicated to provide access to fanworks, and to protect and defend fanworks from commercial exploitation and legal challenge. Strikethrough and Boldthrough definitely pushed the project along. OTW began open beta testing of Archive of Our Own in November 2009. 

DreamWidth opened for business in the summer of 2008. DW was conceived by former LJ staff members who shared the vision of a journal site created by people who understand journal users because _they are journal users, too._ Like LJ, it is a for-profit business that features both paid and free accounts. Unlike LJ, DW is dedicated to being totally ad-free. From the outset, it was designed to be fandom-friendly, and the ToS do not restrict the type or appropriateness of content. Initially, invites were required to open an account. This was done to control how many new accounts were created at any given time, and to ensure that sufficient resources — hardware, bandwidth, and support — were available. The invite system encouraged former LJ users to bring along their friends, and helped to ease the transition of fandoms from LJ to DW. The invite system was discontinued in December 2011.

In mid-January 2010, DreamWidth came under pressure by an undisclosed group who tried to convince DW’s server and PayPal, among others, that DW was being used as a platform for child pornography. DW refused to give in to the harassment and intimidation, and promptly notified users about the situation. The only consequence of the group’s pressure was that new requests for paid services were temporarily put on hold until DW was able to find a new payment processor service. DW remained true to its [Guiding Principles](http://www.dreamwidth.org/legal/principles) by keeping users informed throughout this incident, and respecting freedom of expression by refusing to delete any posts or blogs to satisfy the demands of the group of trolls. 

Which brings us to Tumblr. 

Tumblr was launched in 2007. While not all fans have embraced it, citing reasons like character restrictions in replies and asks, and the difficulty of finding others who share one’s fandom, it’s certain that the majority of fandoms are well-represented. 

However, in July 2013, fans once again expressed outrage when Tumblr - without warning – removed accounts flagged as "NSFW" or "Adult" from public searches, made those blogs inaccessible to Tumblr users not already following them, and deleted a number of tags from its mobile app, including #gay, #lesbian and #bisexual. In a manner unsettlingly reminiscent of Strikethrough and Boldthrough, Tumblr did not immediately respond, and the response posted 24 hours later was widely regarded as a non-apology apology. Tumblr claimed it had been trying to get rid of commercial porn blogs, and eventually asserted that all the removed accounts had been reinstated. 

If there’s a lesson to be learned from this, it’s that which George Santayana proclaimed: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Most blogging and social networking sites are in business to make a profit, and fandoms make them uncomfortable. They inevitably take steps to control the content being posted, to keep outside groups or their new owners happy, disrupting fandoms and deleting material that fans had considered to be safely stored. 

The only solution I can see is for fans to copy and back up the things that are important to them. As a friend in IT advised me, copies of the fanworks one has created should be saved in three places: on your hard drive, on a dedicated USB flash drive, and in a cloud account. Maintain active accounts at several sites. Keep a list of your friends’ pseudonyms and emails. 

Because the only thing that’s certain is that it’s going to happen again, when we least expect it. 

  


I highly recommend that you read [ A brief history of fandom, for the teenagers on here who somehow think tumblr invented fandom:](http://ofhouseadama.tumblr.com/post/86424015604) by [ofhouseadama](ofhouseadama.tumblr.com). 

  


This article is still being revised. I intend to eventually make proper footnotes at some point, but until then, here's a list of sources I used in writing this article: 

http://astolat.livejournal.com/150556.html 

http://astridv.livejournal.com/84769.html 

http://boingboing.net/2007/05/31/lj-purge-drama-who-a.html 

http://www.dailydot.com/business/yahoo-tumblr-fandom-lessons/ 

http://www.dailydot.com/culture/livejournal-decline-timeline/ 

http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/tumblr-nsfw-content-tags-search/ 

http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/tumblr-statement-banned-hashtags/ 

http://www.dailydot.com/society/pros-cons-tumblr-livejournal-fandom/ 

http://www.dailydot.com/society/tracking-livejournal-fandom-diaspora-infographic/ 

http://dw-news.dreamwidth.org/16590.html?view=top-only#comments 

http://www.dreamwidth.org/legal/tos

http://elke-tanzer.dreamwidth.org/951013.html 

http://fandom-flies.livejournal.com/profile 

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Archive_Of_Our_Own 

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Boldthrough 

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Dreamwidth 

http://fanlore.org/wiki/LiveJournal 

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Strikethrough 

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Tumblr 

http://fanthropology.livejournal.com/374988.html 

http://firefox.org/news/articles/555/1/Editorial----Livejournal-Employee-Publicly-Mocks-Fandom/Page1.html

http://hatteress.tumblr.com/post/55834911159/tumblrs-new-nsfw-restrictions-and-why-turning-off-safe 

http://innocence-jihad.livejournal.com/159327.html 

http://innocence-jihad.livejournal.com/31786.html 

http://liz-marcs.livejournal.com/283323.html 

http://liz-marcs.livejournal.com/283781.html 

http://metafandom.livejournal.com/114942.html 

http://www.metafilter.com/61636/livejournal-suspends-hundreds-of-accounts#1712054 

http://missmediajunkie.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-i-dont-use-tumblr.html

http://news.cnet.com/Mass-deletion-sparks-LiveJournal-revolt/2100-1025_3-6187619.html 

http://news.livejournal.com/99159.html

http://staff.tumblr.com/post/55906556378/all-weve-heard-from-a-bunch-of-you-who-are 

http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=LJ_Strikethrough_2007#After_the_Strikethrough_-_On_to_Boldthrough 

http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/the-death-of-the-blog-and-the-rise-of-tumblr-210071.html 

http://thelearnedfangirl.com/2009/01/blogging-may-not-be-dead-but-live-journal-may-be/

http://transformativeworks.org/sites/default/files/OTW_Annual_Report_2007.pdf 

http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/Notable_Dreamwidth_Reading

https://zine.openrightsgroup.org/features/2012/fandom:-open-culture-vs.-closed-platforms 

http://www.zdnet.com/after-backlash-yahoos-tumblr-quietly-restores-adult-nsfw-blogs-7000018342/ 

**Author's Note:**

>  **EDIT:** 24 August 2014 - It has been brought to my attention that the original form of this article implies that OTW was responsible for creating DW, which is definitely _not_ the case. I apologize for this inaccuracy, and plan to make corrections.
> 
>  **EDIT:** 11 September 2014 - Made corrections to more accurately reflect the origins of DW. 
> 
> **EDIT:** December 2016 - I am so, so sorry I STILL haven't gotten around to making proper footnotes for this!
> 
>  **EDIT:** 8 February 2019 - This was sadly prophetic in that Tumblr announced its plan to ban adult content from the platform starting 17 December 2017. Unfortunately, the bot Tumblr is using to do so is also flagging completely inoffensive content - photos of horses, drawings of dinosaurs, Michelangelo's _David_ \- as NSFW. As predicted, fandom is once again looking for a home. My recommendation is DreamWidth, which has proven its commitment to fandom.
> 
> [](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)  
> The Places Fandom Dwells: A Cautionary Tale by mizstorge is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).  
> Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <https://mizstorge.dreamwidth.org/profile>.


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